My favorite chocolate chip cookies

I’m not sure why exactly baking is everyone’s particular obsession right now. Is it all the spare time at home? A desire for comfort food? Feeling guilty about panic buying too much flour and needing to put it to good use? Probably a little of all three.

I’m deep in it myself. I’ve nearly gone through a whole 5 pound bag of flour in less than a month. So far I’ve made cinnamon rolls, pancakes, waffles, and pita bread—each of these recipes is a tried and true favorite. I think next up I’ll make something totally new to me like bagels or pasta.

But the easiest and most comforting use I’ve found for my bag of flour is these chocolate chip cookies. It’s the only CCC recipe I use anymore and, with just a couple alterations, these cookies always turns out just how I like them—chewy inside, crisp and beautifully caramelized outside.

Here’s what I do differently:

• Cut down the salt from 1 tsp to 3/4 tsp.
• Cut down the chocolate chips from 12 oz to 10 oz (I know, I know, this sounds crazy, but as much as I love chocolate, 12 oz just ends up being a little too much. It’s even hard to shape the cookies since there’s not quite enough dough to bring all the chips together. With 10 oz you still get plenty of chocolate in each bite plus a more balanced chocolate to dough ratio. Bonus: a handful of chocolate chips leftover for snacking on once the cookies are all gone.
• Make the cookies a little bit bigger. I did this by accident, but I like the results. Instead of the 30 cookie yield I get about 21-22 cookies.
• I use light brown sugar (instead of dark brown) and dark chocolate chips (instead of semi-sweet), just because that’s what I usually have on hand.